CONFIGURATION

Various aspects of gitweb’s behavior can be controlled through the configuration
file gitweb_config.perl or /etc/gitweb.conf. See the gitweb.conf[5]
for details.

Repositories

Gitweb can show information from one or more Git repositories. These
repositories have to be all on local filesystem, and have to share common
repository root, i.e. be all under a single parent repository (but see also
"Advanced web server setup" section, "Webserver configuration with multiple
projects' root" subsection).

our $projectroot = '/path/to/parent/directory';

The default value for $projectroot is /pub/git. You can change it during
building gitweb via GITWEB_PROJECTROOT build configuration variable.

By default all Git repositories under $projectroot are visible and available
to gitweb. The list of projects is generated by default by scanning the
$projectroot directory for Git repositories (for object databases to be
more exact; gitweb is not interested in a working area, and is best suited
to showing "bare" repositories).

The name of the repository in gitweb is the path to its $GIT_DIR (its object
database) relative to $projectroot. Therefore the repository $repo can be
found at "$projectroot/$repo".

Projects list file format

Instead of having gitweb find repositories by scanning filesystem
starting from $projectroot, you can provide a pre-generated list of
visible projects by setting $projects_list to point to a plain text
file with a list of projects (with some additional info).

This file uses the following format:

One record (for project / repository) per line; does not support line
continuation (newline escaping).

Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.

Whitespace separated fields; any run of whitespace can be used as field
separator (rules for Perl’s "split(" ", $line)").

Fields use modified URI encoding, defined in RFC 3986, section 2.1
(Percent-Encoding), or rather "Query string encoding" (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string#URL_encoding), the difference
being that SP (" ") can be encoded as "+" (and therefore "+" has to be
also percent-encoded).

Reserved characters are: "%" (used for encoding), "+" (can be used to
encode SPACE), all whitespace characters as defined in Perl, including SP,
TAB and LF, (used to separate fields in a record).

Currently recognized fields are:

<repository path>

path to repository GIT_DIR, relative to $projectroot

<repository owner>

displayed as repository owner, preferably full name, or email,
or both

You can generate the projects list index file using the project_index action
(the TXT link on projects list page) directly from gitweb; see also
"Generating projects list using gitweb" section below.

By default this file controls only which projects are visible on projects
list page (note that entries that do not point to correctly recognized Git
repositories won’t be displayed by gitweb). Even if a project is not
visible on projects list page, you can view it nevertheless by hand-crafting
a gitweb URL. By setting $strict_export configuration variable (see
gitweb.conf[5]) to true value you can allow viewing only of
repositories also shown on the overview page (i.e. only projects explicitly
listed in projects list file will be accessible).

Generating projects list using gitweb

We assume that GITWEB_CONFIG has its default Makefile value, namely
gitweb_config.perl. Put the following in gitweb_make_index.perl file:

Run this script and save its output to a file. This file could then be used
as projects list file, which means that you can set $projects_list to its
filename.

Controlling access to Git repositories

By default all Git repositories under $projectroot are visible and
available to gitweb. You can however configure how gitweb controls access
to repositories.

As described in "Projects list file format" section, you can control which
projects are visible by selectively including repositories in projects
list file, and setting $projects_list gitweb configuration variable to
point to it. With $strict_export set, projects list file can be used to
control which repositories are available as well.

You can configure gitweb to only list and allow viewing of the explicitly
exported repositories, via $export_ok variable in gitweb config file; see
gitweb.conf[5] manpage. If it evaluates to true, gitweb shows
repositories only if this file named by $export_ok exists in its object
database (if directory has the magic file named $export_ok).

For example git-daemon[1] by default (unless --export-all option
is used) allows pulling only for those repositories that have
git-daemon-export-ok file. Adding

our $export_ok = "git-daemon-export-ok";

makes gitweb show and allow access only to those repositories that can be
fetched from via git:// protocol.

Finally, it is possible to specify an arbitrary perl subroutine that will
be called for each repository to determine if it can be exported. The
subroutine receives an absolute path to the project (repository) as its only
parameter (i.e. "$projectroot/$project").

For example, if you use mod_perl to run the script, and have dumb
HTTP protocol authentication configured for your repositories, you
can use the following hook to allow access only if the user is
authorized to read the files:

Per-repository gitweb configuration

You can configure individual repositories shown in gitweb by creating file
in the GIT_DIR of Git repository, or by setting some repo configuration
variable (in GIT_DIR/config, see git-config[1]).

You can use the following files in repository:

README.html

A html file (HTML fragment) which is included on the gitweb project
"summary" page inside <div> block element. You can use it for longer
description of a project, to provide links (for example to project’s
homepage), etc. This is recognized only if XSS prevention is off
($prevent_xss is false, see gitweb.conf[5]); a way to include
a README safely when XSS prevention is on may be worked out in the
future.

description (or gitweb.description)

Short (shortened to $projects_list_description_width in the projects
list page, which is 25 characters by default; see
gitweb.conf[5]) single line description of a project (of a
repository). Plain text file; HTML will be escaped. By default set to

Unnamed repository; edit this file to name it for gitweb.

from the template during repository creation, usually installed in
/usr/share/git-core/templates/. You can use the gitweb.description repo
configuration variable, but the file takes precedence.

category (or gitweb.category)

Singe line category of a project, used to group projects if
$projects_list_group_categories is enabled. By default (file and
configuration variable absent), uncategorized projects are put in the
$project_list_default_category category. You can use the
gitweb.category repo configuration variable, but the file takes
precedence.

The configuration variables $projects_list_group_categories and
$project_list_default_category are described in gitweb.conf[5]

cloneurl (or multiple-valued gitweb.url)

File with repository URL (used for clone and fetch), one per line.
Displayed in the project summary page. You can use multiple-valued
gitweb.url repository configuration variable for that, but the file
takes precedence.

You can use the gitweb.owner repository configuration variable to set
repository’s owner. It is displayed in the project list and summary
page.

If it’s not set, filesystem directory’s owner is used (via GECOS field,
i.e. real name field from getpwuid(3)) if $projects_list is unset
(gitweb scans $projectroot for repositories); if $projects_list
points to file with list of repositories, then project owner defaults to
value from this file for given repository.

various gitweb.* config variables (in config)

Read description of %feature hash for detailed list, and descriptions.
See also "Configuring gitweb features" section in gitweb.conf[5]

ACTIONS, AND URLS

Gitweb can use path_info (component) based URLs, or it can pass all necessary
information via query parameters. The typical gitweb URLs are broken down in to
five components:

.../gitweb.cgi/<repo>/<action>/<revision>:/<path>?<arguments>

repo

The repository the action will be performed on.

All actions except for those that list all available projects,
in whatever form, require this parameter.

action

The action that will be run. Defaults to projects_list if repo
is not set, and to summary otherwise.

revision

Revision shown. Defaults to HEAD.

path

The path within the <repository> that the action is performed on,
for those actions that require it.

arguments

Any arguments that control the behaviour of the action.

Some actions require or allow to specify two revisions, and sometimes even two
pathnames. In most general form such path_info (component) based gitweb URL
looks like this:

Each action is implemented as a subroutine, and must be present in %actions
hash. Some actions are disabled by default, and must be turned on via feature
mechanism. For example to enable blame view add the following to gitweb
configuration file:

$feature{'blame'}{'default'} = [1];

Actions:

The standard actions are:

project_list

Lists the available Git repositories. This is the default command if no
repository is specified in the URL.

summary

Displays summary about given repository. This is the default command if
no action is specified in URL, and only repository is specified.

heads

remotes

Lists all local or all remote-tracking branches in given repository.

The latter is not available by default, unless configured.

tags

List all tags (lightweight and annotated) in given repository.

blob

tree

Shows the files and directories in a given repository path, at given
revision. This is default command if no action is specified in the URL,
and path is given.

blob_plain

Returns the raw data for the file in given repository, at given path and
revision. Links to this action are marked raw.

blobdiff

Shows the difference between two revisions of the same file.

blame

blame_incremental

Shows the blame (also called annotation) information for a file. On a
per line basis it shows the revision in which that line was last changed
and the user that committed the change. The incremental version (which
if configured is used automatically when JavaScript is enabled) uses
Ajax to incrementally add blame info to the contents of given file.

This action is disabled by default for performance reasons.

commit

commitdiff

Shows information about a specific commit in a repository. The commit
view shows information about commit in more detail, the commitdiff
action shows changeset for given commit.

patch

Returns the commit in plain text mail format, suitable for applying with
git-am[1].

tag

Display specific annotated tag (tag object).

log

shortlog

Shows log information (commit message or just commit subject) for a
given branch (starting from given revision).

The shortlog view is more compact; it shows one commit per line.

history

Shows history of the file or directory in a given repository path,
starting from given revision (defaults to HEAD, i.e. default branch).

This view is similar to shortlog view.

rss

atom

Generates an RSS (or Atom) feed of changes to repository.

WEBSERVER CONFIGURATION

This section explains how to configure some common webservers to run gitweb. In
all cases, /path/to/gitweb in the examples is the directory you ran installed
gitweb in, and contains gitweb_config.perl.

If you’ve configured a web server that isn’t listed here for gitweb, please send
in the instructions so they can be included in a future release.

Apache as CGI

Apache must be configured to support CGI scripts in the directory in
which gitweb is installed. Let’s assume that it is /var/www/cgi-bin
directory.

With that configuration the full path to browse repositories would be:

http://server/perl/gitweb.cgi

Apache with FastCGI

Gitweb works with Apache and FastCGI. First you need to rename, copy
or symlink gitweb.cgi to gitweb.fcgi. Let’s assume that gitweb is
installed in /usr/share/gitweb directory. The following Apache
configuration is suitable (UNTESTED!)

The above configuration expects your public repositories to live under
/pub/git and will serve them as http://git.domain.org/dir-under-pub-git,
both as clonable Git URL and as browseable gitweb interface. If you then
start your git-daemon[1] with --base-path=/pub/git --export-all
then you can even use the git:// URL with exactly the same path.

Setting the environment variable GITWEB_CONFIG will tell gitweb to use the
named file (i.e. in this example /etc/gitweb.conf) as a configuration for
gitweb. You don’t really need it in above example; it is required only if
your configuration file is in different place than built-in (during
compiling gitweb) gitweb_config.perl or /etc/gitweb.conf. See
gitweb.conf[5] for details, especially information about precedence
rules.

If you use the rewrite rules from the example you might also need
something like the following in your gitweb configuration file
(/etc/gitweb.conf following example):

Here actual project root is passed to gitweb via GITWEB_PROJECT_ROOT
environment variable from a web server, so you need to put the following
line in gitweb configuration file (/etc/gitweb.conf in above example):

$projectroot = $ENV{'GITWEB_PROJECTROOT'} || "/pub/git";

Note that this requires to be set for each request, so either
$per_request_config must be false, or the above must be put in code
referenced by $per_request_config;

These configurations enable two things. First, each unix user (<user>) of
the server will be able to browse through gitweb Git repositories found in
~/public_git/ with the following url:

http://git.example.org/~<user>/

If you do not want this feature on your server just remove the second
rewrite rule.

If you already use mod_userdir in your virtual host or you don’t want to
use the '~' as first character, just comment or remove the second rewrite
rule, and uncomment one of the following according to what you want.

Second, repositories found in /pub/scm/ and /var/git/ will be accessible
through http://git.example.org/scm/ and http://git.example.org/var/.
You can add as many project roots as you want by adding rewrite rules like
the third and the fourth.

PATH_INFO usage

If you enable PATH_INFO usage in gitweb by putting

$feature{'pathinfo'}{'default'} = [1];

in your gitweb configuration file, it is possible to set up your server so
that it consumes and produces URLs in the form

http://git.example.com/project.git/shortlog/sometag

i.e. without gitweb.cgi part, by using a configuration such as the
following. This configuration assumes that /var/www/gitweb is the
DocumentRoot of your webserver, contains the gitweb.cgi script and
complementary static files (stylesheet, favicon, JavaScript):

The rewrite rule guarantees that existing static files will be properly
served, whereas any other URL will be passed to gitweb as PATH_INFO
parameter.

Notice that in this case you don’t need special settings for
@stylesheets, $my_uri and $home_link, but you lose "dumb client"
access to your project .git dirs (described in "Single URL for gitweb and
for fetching" section). A possible workaround for the latter is the
following: in your project root dir (e.g. /pub/git) have the projects
named without a .git extension (e.g. /pub/git/project instead of
/pub/git/project.git) and configure Apache as follows: